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Trade-Ideas: St Jude Medical (STJ) Is Today's Pre-Market Leader Stock

Editor's Note: Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of TheStreet, Inc. or any of its contributors including Jim Cramer or Stephanie Link.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified
St Jude Medical (
STJ) as a pre-market leader candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified St Jude Medical as such a stock due to the following factors:

STJ has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $179.2 million.

St. Jude Medical, Inc. develops, manufactures, and distributes cardiovascular and implantable neurostimulation medical devices worldwide. It operates in two divisions, Cardiovascular and Ablation Technologies, and Implantable Electronic Systems. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 1.7%. STJ has a PE ratio of 16.0. Currently there are 11 analysts that rate St Jude Medical a buy, 1 analyst rates it a sell, and 10 rate it a hold.

The average volume for St Jude Medical has been 2.4 million shares per day over the past 30 days. St Jude Medical has a market cap of $17.5 billion and is part of the health care sector and health services industry. The stock has a beta of 1.52 and a short float of 2% with 1.48 days to cover. Shares are down 2.3% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday.

TheStreet Quant Ratings rates St Jude Medical as a
buy. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, growth in earnings per share, increase in net income, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures and solid stock price performance. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook.

Highlights from the ratings report include:

The revenue growth came in higher than the industry average of 25.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 3.6%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, improving the earnings per share.

ST JUDE MEDICAL INC has improved earnings per share by 7.7% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past year. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, ST JUDE MEDICAL INC increased its bottom line by earning $2.50 versus $2.40 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($3.97 versus $2.50).

The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has exceeded that of the Health Care Equipment & Supplies industry average, but is less than that of the S&P 500. The net income increased by 2.5% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, going from $120.00 million to $123.00 million.

STJ's debt-to-equity ratio of 0.81 is somewhat low overall, but it is high when compared to the industry average, implying that the management of the debt levels should be evaluated further. Despite the fact that STJ's debt-to-equity ratio is mixed in its results, the company's quick ratio of 2.03 is high and demonstrates strong liquidity.

Investors have apparently begun to recognize positive factors similar to those we have mentioned in this report, including earnings growth. This has helped drive up the company's shares by a sharp 42.41% over the past year, a rise that has exceeded that of the S&P 500 Index. Looking ahead, the stock's sharp rise over the last year has already helped drive it to a level which is relatively expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.